Lsherm:If a public entity such as a city wants to call it something else - go nuts. I won't get up in arms until someone makes a church remove "Easter" from the description, but even then I'd be pointing out that it's pretty damn ridiculous to begin with.

Exactly. Being a Christian myself, I would actually prefer if no church ever had an easter egg hunt, or gave out easter baskets or anything that related to the pagan holiday. I find it highly curious that so many Christians would get very upset over the removal of these symbols.

I recently had a discussion with a family member over this with this as an example:

If the egg and bunny are essentially fertility symbols of a god that the Bible expressly forbids worship of, and the pentagram or any other satanic symbol is also a symbol of a being that the Bible expressly forbids worship of...then what would happen if we simply replaced the symbols. So instead of an easter basket with bunnies and eggs, we had a basket with pentagrams and ouija boards? Would there be any true difference? The bunny and eggs seem harmless, yet no Christian would decorate a basket with pentagrams and ouija boards. The differences (to the Christian) are essentially none. Both would constitute symbols of things that are at their heart, anti-God. In today's society, however, the bunny and egg seem cute and harmless, and because Christians allow these things to be celebrated consistently, there seems to be this idea that they should be included in Easter.

Obviously, as others have noted in this thread, Easter essentially rolled up other religions of the Roman era into the same general time period that the Christians were celebrating Jesus' resurrection. It gave the slaves (a large portion of the empire) a day off and allowed for a national holiday that was very inclusive.

EngineerAU:So you believe Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus, dates back to the Bronze Age, even though it ended over half a millennium before Jesus came to earth? Don't you think people were wondering all that time who is this Jesus dude whose resurrection they were celebrating when he hadn't been born yet?

No. I believe Easter, the celebration of the English pagan goddess Eostre, has been around since the Proto-Germanic goddess Austro was around (the German name for April, ostermonat, being another remnant of this), and probably back to when Proto-Indo European was one language, and Eostre, Eos, Aurora, Zorya, and Ushas were all the same deity Hausos.

The weird thing is not saying Easter's been around since the Bronze Age. The weird thing is Christians trying to protect the pagan name and related pagan customs of an Indo-European deity being attached to the central event of their Semetic god's religion.

EngineerAU:Fade2black: Actually he's spot on. Was coming in to say about the same thing.

So you believe Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus, dates back to the Bronze Age, even though it ended over half a millennium before Jesus came to earth? Don't you think people were wondering all that time who is this Jesus dude whose resurrection they were celebrating when he hadn't been born yet?

Let's return the original observation: The holiday has been around in one form or another since the bronze age

You assume "holiday" means "Easter." It doesn't. It's the holiday of Ishtar, a Bronze Age fertility goddess whose symbols included eggs and rabbits. Christians co-opted Ishtar's holiday in order to overwrite its meaning with their own. Obviously, that has not worked entirely.

Lordserb:Exactly. Being a Christian myself, I would actually prefer if no church ever had an easter egg hunt, or gave out easter baskets or anything that related to the pagan holiday. I find it highly curious that so many Christians would get very upset over the removal of these symbols.

The reason these traditions are there is because it helped with the spread of early Christianity. It was much easier to get people to convert if they could retain their existing holiday traditions. So the holidays were incorporated and given Christian symbolism. The various non-religious popular aspects of Halloween and Christmas are the same.

AbbeySomeone:LordZorch: Puget Sound - home to many of the world's libtard dumbasses.

The holiday has been around in one form or another since the bronze age, the libtards should get over themselves and their PC idiocy.

Ummhmm. STFU. You got no clue.

Actually he's spot on. Was coming in to say about the same thing. Got alot of narcissistic liberal douches up here that love to make it seem like a holiday is somehow offensive to them. I'm not even a Christian and I call it Easter. Because it's farking Easter. And....it's good Friday! OH MUH LAWD SOMEONE CALL THE PC POHLEECE!